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My tires have quite a lot of 1/4 oz weights on them, and I can see the yellow dot is no-where near the valve stem. On one tire, it's 165 degrees from the valve stem, so it needed a lot of weights. Was that co-incidence from the runout, or did they just ignore the dots? Ideas for how to find out?

Likely they just ignored the dots. The wheel runout dot is often on the interior of the wheel (the part you can't see when the tire is mounted). However, it could be that the tire isn't seated properly. Jack the car up, spin the tire (with your hand) and see if the guide rib is even (this is a bit hard to do on the inside).

Generally OE wheels are marked and aftermarket ones aren't. However the Roadster was such limited production that it might not be marked--and there are always exceptions.

Heard back from Tesla service - they use the yellow dots (minimal weight) method.

Just had the tire place remount the wheels: saved over an ounce of weights.

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Thank you! I'd never had known otherwise about this tidbit. I think keeping the rear wheels properly balanced (and less weight is always better) is key to the electric motor longevity. I've seen in electric motorcycles that as soon as there's any little bit of vibration due to an out of balance event the electric motor bearings become toast and fail soon after. So if you ever hit a pot hole or feel your rear end vibrate make sure you address it soon. I'm due for a tire change-out within 5k miles and will push this yellow dot lineup with the valvestem to the tire folks.

Heard back from Tesla service - they use the yellow dots (minimal weight) method.

Just had the tire place remount the wheels: saved over an ounce of weights.

Click to expand...

Not sure I knew about this and I too have what I think is a lot of weight on my of my new wheels. Exactly where is the yellow dot supposed to go? At the Valve stem? It looks like they mounted the red dot at the valve stem and there is a yellow dot that is opposite of the valve stem. I also have a fair amount of weight added by the yellow dot.

To facilitate proper balancing, Yokohama places red and yellow marks on the sidewalls of its tires to enable the best possible match-mounting of the tire/wheel assembly. There are two methods of match-mounting Yokohama tires to wheel assemblies using these red or yellow marks:

Uniformity (red mark)
Weight (yellow mark)

Weight Method
When performing weight match-mounting, the yellow mark on the tire, indicating the point of lightest weight, should be aligned with the valve stem on the wheel assembly, which represents the heaviest weight point of the wheel assembly.

By putting the yellow dot opposite the value stem (not next to it), you have the worst possible situation: the heaviest part of the tire is by the heaviest part of the wheel. Now, they can still balance the assembly, but it's best to not have additional weights added if you don't need them.

but it's best to not have additional weights added if you don't need them.

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True. Typically the more weights you have the more likely one will unbuckle off the double sided tape when hitting a pot-hole / bump and throw your wheel off-balance again. Less weight lowers your chance of popping off a weight. Also as the tire wears I bet that the more weights you have will then make your tire very un-balanced since the original unbalanced portion (balanced now with excessive additional weight) has been worn off significantly from normal tire wear.

By putting the yellow dot opposite the value stem (not next to it), you have the worst possible situation: the heaviest part of the tire is by the heaviest part of the wheel. Now, they can still balance the assembly, but it's best to not have additional weights added if you don't need them.

Click to expand...

And the way the weights are often installed makes them only partially effective. The weights need to be at the indicated point--not halfway around the wheel.

WOW, the tire place did not know about the yellow dots and I went back to have them remounted and balanced as the tires are only a month old. One wheel went from 3.5 OZ to .5 OZ and the other from 3.75 to 2 OZ. So it can make a noticeable difference.

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